Social Awkwardness

I guess everybody has some form of social awkwardness; maybe they can't talk to strangers or dance in front of crowds. I never really thought anything of my little social issues, but I'm starting to pick up on them now and try to correct them, but I suspect it's not working. Like on the buses, I see people I know and my natural instinct is to say hello, and most of the time I do but sometimes it just doesn't come out at all even though I intended to say something, or if I do make a sound it isn't actual words. Other times if I pass someone I know in the corridor in school, I look at them, but instead of smiling being the natural reaction, I have to tell myself to smile, and instead they get some weird glare and the person behind them that I probably don't know get smiled at by a complete weirdo. Then sometimes if I walk into form in the morning, I mean to smile at my form tutor and say good morning, but around fifty percent of the time, the words don't come out but the smile does, so again I just look weird and creepy. Sometimes it's just like there are gaps between realising I should be doing something, telling myself to do it and doing it. It's like I'm drink driving, but instead of driving, I'm talking.

Occasionally, it gets worse than that, and it delves into my actual day to day speech, although this usually only happens when I'm talking to a superior, like a teacher or something, but lately it's been happening when I'm talking to my friends as well. What happens is that I'm talking normally, usually when I'm trying to explain something like an opinion, and then my brain runs out of words. There are a lot of words in storage but none of them are right, and it takes me a while to search through them to find the right one. Sometimes I know the word is there, I know exactly what I need to say, but it won't come out. Like a stutter, someone said to me. A hesitating stutter, a stutter of hesitance. It's not all the time, but it gets a lot worse when I'm nervous, which makes speaking exams hell for me. 

There are other things I do, too. I shake a lot. I'm constantly being asked "are you okay? You're shaking!" but I'm usually fine! It makes everything so awkward, and I have nothing near a steady hand, which is a huge inconvenience as most of the time it means that my handwriting is atrocious. I'm always cold which doesn't help the shaking, but that might just be because I have really low body fat percentage on my limbs, so I have no insulation. Also, sometimes, usually when I'm nervous or even vaguely excited, all of my words jumble together into one indistinguishable mess, and when I try to slow it down, my mouth just works faster. It's ridiculous and irritating. I hate formal phone conversations, too. With my friends I'm fine, as long as I'm not in public. That makes me feel a bit sick. And then I can do any amount of ridiculous things on stage or in front of a crowd, but put me on the spot in front of one or two people and BOOM, all of the above. 

I don't know what the point to this post was, I think it might have been more for my benefit than for anyone else's. I hope you found it slightly entertaining.